America’s Bureaucratic Response to The Wuhan Pandemic

The very last thing our nation needs in the midst of the Wuhan Covid-19 pandemic is bureaucratic- speak from government officials. For the past four months the nation has been barraged with mind-numbing hyperbole from the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Just to be clear, Dr, Fauci is an incredibly well-trained physician, academician, virologist, public health expert and scientist. However, he is not someone on the front lines treating patients, unlike so many primary care physicians dealing directly with sick patients in their offices, hospitals and emergency rooms. He certainly understands the coronavirus’s biological structure intricacies, replication and spread, and interprets data models being put forth. To our knowledge, he is not seeing or examining patients, taking histories, or formulating differential diagnoses and treatment plans for individual patients. As Yuval Levin in The Wall Street Journal states: “Then technical experts advise government officials, they aren’t just conveying neutral facts…That’s what makes them useful—and also limits their value.”

His skill set is as an academician and researcher and not a clinician. His perspective may be a bit conservative and based on cold data, rather than the interactive experience gleaned by actually caring for patients. We have long felt the need for a clinician to be at Dr. Fauci’s side, giving a balanced perspective of what is truly going on with the patient care landscape with Covid-19. We would be necessarily informed by a more practical, humanistic understanding, not just statistical, with a touch of hope to how patients respond and what America and the world truly face.

The statistical models produced by different organizations have proven time and again to be inaccurate. The medical infrastructure in the United States cannot be compared to Italy, China or anywhere else in the world. America truly ranks at the top in the world through our hospitals, nurses and physicians. Let’s not be cavalier by any means, but let’s accentuate the positives we face and eliminate some of the fear perpetuated by half-truths and innuendos accentuated by the media.

What we HAVE learned is our focus needs to be on people over 65 years of age and those with underlying medical conditions. A high percentage of the deaths have occurred with the elderly in nursing homes and special care facilities. Dr. Fauci needs to sound an alarm about how appalling it is that our elderly population has to suffer yet again!

Here are some recent examples of Fauci-speak which make our point:

“Infections and hospitalizations are declining in some areas while spiking in others. We don’t have it completely under control.”

Opening the country back up “is just not going to happen because it’s such a highly transmissible virus. Even if we get better control over the summer months, it is likely that there will be virus somewhere on this planet that will eventually get back to us.”

Not following the guidelines, presents a “real risk that you will trigger an outbreak.”

Opening the nation and economy too soon may produce “needless suffering and death.”

By reopening too soon “You can almost turn the clock back, rather than going forward…that is my main concern.”

“In this case, the idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate the reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far…even at top speed that we’re going, we don't see a vaccine playing in the ability of individuals to get back to school, this term. What they really want is to know if they are safe.”

What you don’t learn about the nay-saying Anthony Fauci is the fact that America has lived successfully through a number of viral epidemics over five decades. Certainly some people lost their lives, but medicine and the pharmaceutical industry have given us remarkable control over these scourges, and we have not sacrificed our nation’s economy in doing so. Even in years with minor influence outbreaks, tens of thousands of people die from pneumonia brought about by morbidity issues.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is an example. The CDC estimates that more than 1 million people in the U.S. are still living well with the virus; as many as 50,000 people become newly infected every year. HIV was first diagnosed in a San Francisco female sex-worker in 1977, who then gave birth to three children who were later diagnosed with AIDS. The children's blood was tested after their deaths and revealed an HIV infection. The mother died of AIDS in May 1987. People still contract HIV today, but through safe sexual practices and pharmaceutical discoveries, its prevalence and mortality rate have been reduced significantly. Pro basketball player Magic Johnson, Olympic diver Greg Louganis, pro football player Roy Simmons, pro soccer player Job Komol, actors like Charlie Sheen and Styx bassist Chuck Panozzo are living successfully with the disease.

There are a host of other viruses that have killed Americans (SARS, the Spanish Flu, Polio, etc.). Below is a short list of flu types:

—Type A flu viruses cause pandemic flu. A pandemic is the worldwide spread, in humans, of a flu virus to which most people have no natural immunity.

—Type A flu viruses are subtyped according to proteins on their surfaces. There are 16 different H proteins and nine different N proteins. All H and N proteins occur in birds.

—Human disease has traditionally been caused by three H subtypes — H1, H2, and H3 and more recently by new H subtypes — H5, H7, and H9 — from birds. It is feared that one of these subtypes will emerge as the next flu pandemic — particularly the H5N1 virus causing an unprecedented global epidemic among domestic and wild birds. Bird flu viruses come in two varieties: Low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) and High pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) — apparently limited to the H5 and H7 viruses.

We put this year’s flu pandemic into a hopefully more understandable perspective. In this year’s flu season, the CDC estimates between 39,000,000 to 56,000,000 cases and 6,180 deaths. It is interesting to note that in the past decade the CDC reports 3 worse flu seasons, 2017-19, 2014-15 and 2012-13. At this writing the CDC lists 62,515 total Covid-19 deaths. This is somewhat misleading since the agency lists any death where the patient tested positive for Covid-19, as a death from that virus whether it, or other morbidity issues were the cause.

Our COVID-19 statistics differ little from this year’s flu. Both Covid-19 and the flu hit smokers, the morbidly obese, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, hardest. By late this year or early next year we will probably have a vaccine, perhaps several. Right now, we need to open America, its full economic engine running with much less federal and media hyperbole.

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How Intensely Does the Leftwing Media Hate Trump?

Michael Brown

I cannot prove this, but the caller to my radio show seemed totally credible. If what he said is true, then the animosity towards Trump in leftwing circles is even more extreme than some of us would have believed. And that is saying a lot.

The caller, named Rob, from Tampa, Florida, said he had previously worked at an NBC News affiliate up north. (He didn’t want to give further details so as to be able to speak with total freedom.)

As a committed Christian, he claims he was not just in the minority. He was alone, with all the other newsroom staffers, totaling at least 30 people, identifying as either atheists or agnostics. And, he said, “Every single one of them was a hardcore leftist.”

Rob said his last year working at the station was the first year of Trump’s presidency, so, 2017. During that time, a story about Trump was run for a few days, a story that “everyone knew was a lie.”

So he reached out to the assignment editor and said, “What you’re putting on TV is a lie. Why are you doing it?”

According to Rob, “The guy looked at me stone cold and said, ‘It’s not my duty or my obligation to tell the truth. It’s my obligation to get Donald Trump out of the White House.’”

Again, I can’t verify this story, although, to repeat, Rob did seem credible and he was quite aware of Trump’s shortcomings.

But what I can say is this: there is no question that the TV media leans overwhelmingly to the left, and there is no question that the leftist media is overtly and unapologetically hostile to Trump.

Looking first at the media’s anti-Trump reporting, in October, 2017, Pew Research noted that, “The Pew Research Center, in a content analysis of the early days of the Trump presidency, found that 62 percent of the coverage was negative and only 5 percent was positive.

“In contrast, President Barack Obama's coverage in early 2009 was 42 percent positive and 20 percent negative, the study said.”

So, the coverage of Trump was more than 12 to 1 negative; the coverage of Obama was more than 2 to 1 positive.

One year later, in October, 2018, the Media Research Center stated that, “Over the summer, the broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a president in TV news history — 92% negative, vs. just 8% positive.”

By January, 2020, the figure had risen to 93 percent negative.

Certainly, Trump’s provocation of the media plays into these numbers. But whatever the cause, the anti-Trump sentiments have only intensified, and in increasingly unvarnished fashion at that.

As for the political leanings of the media, Nate Silver wrote in 2017 that, “As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans.” (This was down from 25.7 percent in 1971; strikingly, as of 2013, half identified as independent.)

And, a 2017 article in Politico points out, “The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties” (their emphasis).

With good reason, the article, written by Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty, carried this title and subtitle: “The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think. We crunched the data on where journalists work and how fast it’s changing. The results should worry you.”

And then, this striking observation: “The people who report, edit, produce and publish news can’t help being affected—deeply affected—by the environment around them. Former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent got at this when he analyzed the decidedly liberal bent of his newspaper’s staff in a 2004 column that rewards rereading today. The ‘heart, mind, and habits’ of the Times, he wrote, cannot be divorced from the ethos of the cosmopolitan city where it is produced. On such subjects as abortion, gay rights, gun control and environmental regulation, the Times’ news reporting is a pretty good reflection of its region’s dominant predisposition.”

Okrent’s analysis was shockingly candid (and note that it was published by the Times itself). To the headline’s question, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?”, he responded, “Of course it is.” (Again, this was back in 2004.)

With regard to “the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others,” Okrent was equally blunt: “if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed.”

As for “the editorial page,” he described it as “so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.”

Although I cannot get my hands on the research right now, more than one decade ago, I read with interest a survey indicating how news anchors across the nation held to radically leftist views on abortion and other social issues. I would imagine those numbers would look similar today.

It is true that an academic article published by Science Advances in April, 2020 argued that, “Although a dominant majority of journalists identify as liberals/Democrats and many Americans and public officials frequently decry supposedly high and increasing levels of media bias, little compelling evidence exists as to (i) the ideological or partisan leanings of the many journalists who fail to answer surveys and/or identify as independents and (ii) whether journalists’ political leanings bleed into the choice of which stories to cover that Americans ultimately consume.”

Rob, and a host of other observers, including me, would beg to differ.

SOURCE 





Coronavirus Australia: We can’t spend the rest of our lives avoiding risks

How good are Australians in a ­crisis? The number of active cases of COVID-19 has fallen steadily for more than six weeks. At the start of last month, there were almos­t 5000 known carriers. Today there is a tenth as many.

If you want to know what a health crisis really looks like, turn to Britain, where 2642 fatalities have been announced in the past week, pushing deaths per million to 521. In Australia there have been just four per million.

That suggests it is safe to let the experts stand down and put the politicians back in charge. The extraordinary powers given to medical officers and police chiefs should be withdrawn to allow the hard work to begin.

Last week’s unemployment figures are just a taste of the post-pandemic misery. JobKeeper payments have kept Australians employed for now, but not every job is salvageable. Hundreds of thousands more people are likely to be out of work when the payments are wound back.

By any reasonable measure, the health crisis has been averted. Yet the experts who were so swift to alert us to the danger in the first place are slow to admit it.

A second wave, however unwelcome, would almost certainly be smaller than the first. We are far better prepared for its arrival thanks to the investment in ­testing, tracing and additional hospital facilities.

Credit also belongs to the Aust­ralian people, who have sacrificed­ much to beat this virus. Those who still have jobs should be allowed to return to them.

As Scott Morrison was at pains to point out on May 1, opening up the economy involves risk. There will be further outbreaks. More people will be infected and some could die.

Yet we are beyond the point where the pain averted by keeping people at home is greater than the pain it causes. And we are well beyond­ the point when the damage­ to the economy ($4bn a week) can be seen as a necessary or proportionate response.

Let us recall the reason for taking these drastic measures. In late March the virus appeared to be spreading exponentially, such that demand for acute hospital beds might outstrip supply.

The lockdown, together with the work of federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, ensured that didn’t happen. The number of intensive care unit beds tripled to more than 7000. Fewer than 100 were occupied by COVID-19 patients at the height of the pandemic. Yesterday 11 were in use.

With our borders closed, the risk that another wave could be large enough to swamp our health services is extremely slight.

The risk is even lower in South Australia. A swift response from Premier Steven Marshall — the closing of state borders, enforced quarantine for South Australians returning home and the appointment of a state co-ordinator under the Emergency Management Act — allowed SA to contain the virus better than most.

Only one new case has been detected in the state over the past three weeks. Of the 439 cases identified, 435 have recovered. Sadly, the other four died.

Yet bars and pubs remain closed. Cafes and restaurants are limited to 10 patrons at a time, making reopening a loss-making option for most.

Police can issue a $5000 on-the-spot fine to anyone reckless enough to invite more than seven guests to a wedding or 20 mourners to an indoor funeral.

Under whose authority is this extraordinary power given to the police? The authority of the SA Police Commissioner himself, Grant Stevens, who was appointed state co-ordinator of emergency manageme­nt on March 22.

Now that SA is, as near as ­dammit, virus free, Stevens is ­entitled to pat himself on the back, drop in at Government House and relinquish his emergency power, which will otherwise not expire until the end of the month.

Don’t hold your breath. Like the health experts appointed to save us from becoming the Italy of the south, Stevens is in no hurry to return to his day job.

SA Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier put on a “Fri-yay” top to celebrate the “fantastic” news of the state’s clean bill of health, but seems less than eager to step out of the limelight. There was no room for complacency, she warned. There was always the threat of a second wave.

Expert as Spurrier and Stevens might be in their respective fields, health and public order is not the expertise we need at this moment.

Our challenge now is avoiding deep, damaging recession. We need experts in assessing the nationa­l interest, weighing risks and evaluating competing public policy goals. We need experts who can balance the need for a healthy population against the imperative of a healthy economy, particularly in SA, where unemployment is at 7.2 per cent, the highest in the country.

In other words, we need the expertis­e of parliamentarians whose jobs depend on recognising the public interest. The power to make decisions should be remove­d from unelected officials and returned to those with a popular mandate.

The hard road is still ahead. Extraordinary public health measures that impinge on indiv­idual liberty were popular six weeks ago, when the shops were out of toilet paper. Today, they are a burden.

Having controlled this virus better than almost anyone expec­ted, by normalising social ­distancing, reducing international arrivals to a trickle and restricting interstate travel to essential business, governments must act quickly to lift restrictions.

The speed of economic recovery will depend on the willingness of businesses to take risks by investin­g and hiring, despite the uncertainties that will bedevil us.

Governments must lead by exampl­e before the culture of risk-avoidance that takes hold in a pandemic becomes entrenched in public and commercial life.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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